Dame Barbara Cartland ( 2 )

By: Birmingham UK Com

In 1989 Barbara Cartland was the first person ever to appear twice on the famous television show 'This is your Life' Barbara Cartland has championed many causes and taken part in a variety of projects. She has been a County Councillor for nine years, drawn attention to the condition of Housing and Homes for the elderly and even had the law changed in order that Romany children should go to school. This was one of the most unpopular causes she had ever attempted but the provision of camps for Romany gypsies is down to Barbara Cartland. She helped set up fourteen county council camps in Hertfordshire and other counties followed suit. There is even a camp named after her - Barbaraville!

You might be tempted into thinking that Barbara Cartland lived in a fantasy pink world of imagination if it were not for the fact that she has achieved many great things. Her interests have been extensive and she has even written countless books and articles about health and encouraged the use of alternative medicine. In fact, Barbara Cartland answered 40,000 letters a year, of which, 30,000 were about health. She frequently wrote journals and reports about health products which was unpaid work. This is a lady who was very much 'in touch' with the modern world.

Barbara Cartland was awarded for Achievement by Prime Minister Chirac of France the honour bestowed upon her by the City of Paris in a country where over thirty million copies her books had been sold. Since this time the figure has risen to over sixty million.

Barbara Cartland always had a soft spot for Birmingham and visited it regularly for appearances on Pebble Mill and Birmingham radio stations. She gave many interviews to Birmingham newspapers and in particular the 'Birmingham Post' and she always said she was delighted to have been born in a great city and proud of everything that Birmingham had achieved.

Barbara Cartland touched so many lives. Our thanks go to Ian McCorquodale for providing us with his mothers final farewell - "How I want to be Remembered", a document detailing her family history and an insight into her ninety six years which have been saddened by family tragedy and ecstatically happy through her love of her family.

Barbara acknowledges that she has been shown great kindness and also a certain amount of teasing and ridicule by the Press. However, according to her publishers she has produced 724 books, sold over a billion copies and entered the Guinness Book of Records as the best selling author in the World. Published in every country this amazing lady can afford to rise above those who might make fun of her. This marvellous woman is beyond ridicule and has no need to prove anything to anyone. The facts speak for themselves. Barbara Cartland is the most successful writer of romantic fiction of all time. And - she was born in Birmingham!

Barbara Cartland was an amazingly prolific author. When her books were selling so well in the late 1970's, her American and English publishers came to her and asked for more Barbara Cartlands to satisfy the demanding audience.

She then doubled her output from 10 books a year to 20 books a year, and this at the age of 77! She kept this up, extraordinarily for 20 years, between the ages of 77 and 97. This is something that has never been achieved before by any author.

Eventually, even her publishers could not cope with her output and when she died in 2000 she left a legacy of 160 unpublished manuscripts which are now being published by her son, Ian, on the internet and by mail order, under the banner of the Barbara Cartland Pink Collection.

Will there ever again be a writer with such genius and prolific writing skills?